The Intelligence Industrial Complex Prepares for War - EmptyWheel

[WillyT]

The Intelligence Industrial Complex Prepares for War
By: emptywheel Saturday July 17, 2010 12:10 pm

<snip>

In my review of Tim Shorrock’s important Spies for Hire, I summarized one of the most important parts of the narrative he tells in the book.

Shorrock describes, for example, McConnell’s key role in the formation of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), a trade organization that serves as a bridge between large intelligence contractors (like Booz Allen, SAIC, Computer Sciences Corporation, and ManTech) and the officers from CIA, NSA, and DHS who join them on the board of the organization. “INSA,” Shorrock explains, “is one of the only business associations in Washington that include current government officials on their board of directors.” Shorrock describes how INSA worked with the DNI (back when John Negroponte was DNI and McConnell was head of INSA and a VP at Booz Allen) to foster information sharing in the intelligence community–including with contractors. He reports that, for the first time in 2006, INSA’s contractors were consulted on the DNI’s strategic plans for the next decade. And Shorrock describes one intelligence veteran wondering “if INSA has become a way for contractors and intelligence officials to create policy in secret, without oversight from Congress.”

McConnell, after nurturing this enhanced relationship between contractors and government intelligence services, ascended to serve as DNI. He was, Shorrock points out, “the first contractor ever to be named to lead the Intelligence Community.” Once confirmed, McConnell immediately buried a report assessing the practice of outsourcing intelligence. And he worked to further expand the ties between government spying and its contractors.

<snip>

<The warrantless wiretap program> not just about Bush and Cheney ignoring laws and spying on citizens (though it is that). It’s that, in the name of fighting terrorism, the Bush Administration is creating a monstrous new Intelligence-Industrial Complex in which intelligence contractors and the government collaborate–with little oversight–to snoop at home and abroad.

Now, Shorrock’s book got far too little attention, IMO. But he did lay out in great detail the many problems with the degree to which we have outsourced our national security infrastructure to contractors (and Jeremy Scahill has, of course, tirelessly chronicled that as well).

Which is why I’m amused by the panic revealed in a memo the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a few weeks ago preparing all members of the intelligence community for an upcoming Dana Priest series covering the same terrain. The memo reveals:

* The Director of Communications for ODNI, Art House, briefed Intelligence Community public affairs officers on the article back in January
* House briefed the Deputies Committee for the intelligence community on the Priest series the week the memo was released
* House has laid out a response plan to Priest’s article including his agency and the NSC, to be coordinated with all the IC agencies
* House is already planning “a meeting or conference call to review procedural action before, during and after publication, and to compare substantive points that might be offered in rebuttal to the article”

Perhaps that’s just good messaging strategy–the kind that (as it happens) becomes a lot less effective when it is laid out ahead of time.

But what I’m perhaps most amused by is this paragraph:

This series has been a long time in preparation and looks designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light. We need to anticipate and prepare so that the good work of our respective organizations is effectively reflected in communications with employees, secondary coverage in the media and in response to questions. <my emphasis>

Nowhere in this memo–at least as republished by Marc Ambinder–does House even hint that Priest has her details wrong (and given that she’s been working on it for two years, I’d be surprised if she did). The only real risk that House raises is the “unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information.”

Yet the conclusion he draws from months of preparation for an article by Priest that is presumably factually correct is that it is “designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light.”

I’ve got a ton of respect for Priest’s reporting and therefore would guess that the article is designed to reveal the truth about the IC and DoD. And yet the intelligence community, inside its bunker, perceives a search for the truth as a design to portray it unfavorably.

What an apt explanation, then, for the problem with excessive contracting: when a reporter avails herself of Constitutionally protected rights to act as a watchdog on our government and its contractors, the government itself assumes that must be an attack. Hell, the IC has had time to preemptively respond to some of the problems Priest is about to reveal (and, as I said, Shorrock gave them a head start two years ago).

But instead, it has decided to go to war.

<snip>

Link: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/07/17/the-intelligence-industrial-complex-prepares-for-war/

I wonder if that enigmatic Twitter post has something to do with this???

:shrug:

[G_j]

1. on EVERY front

we are being scammed

[Subdivisions]

12. YES!!! And we continue to sit back and watch helplessly! n/t

[jody]

2. Obama's crew prepares NIE approved by Senate-House select committee that drives the force structure

and budget.

The intelligence process has numerous shortcomings that are solely the responsibility of a president to correct because only she/he has authority under our Constitution to fix them, if they can be fixed.

[nashville_brook]

3. what enigmatic twitter post? from Dana Priest?

can't wait to read the article when it comes out!

[WillyT]

4. I Was Referring To This:

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8767611

:shrug:

:hi:

[nashville_brook]

6. holy f'n moly -- enigmatic? maybe. explosive -- for reals!

thank you!!!!

[nashville_brook]

8. here's the tweet...

[WillyT]

9. Thanks !!!

:hi:

[Octafish]

5. What was it that Ike warned us about?

The warmongers run the show, not We the People.

[nashville_brook]

7. perhaps "The Unspeakable" will soon be spoken.

"The Unspeakable is not far away. It is not somewhere out there identical with a government that became foreign to us. The emptiness of the void, the vacuum of responsibility and compassion, is in ourselves. Our citizen denial provides the ground for the government's doctrine of "plausible deniability." John F. Kennedy's assassination is rooted in our denial of our nation's crimes in World War II that began the Cold War and the nuclear arms race."






http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1570757550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279467899&sr=1-1


Truth is a journey into darkness.

[Peace Patriot]

15. Great book! Highly recommended! You want to understand this country now?

Let James Douglass walk you through the back doors of that assassination, with his meticulous documentation and truly great mind and soul as your guides.

The concept of "original sin" is useful in understanding our situation now. That "original sin"--the CIA's murder of its own commander in chief and our president--is at the heart of our darkness now, and until we, as a society, acknowledge it and understand all of what it means, we cannot hope to restore the country that many of us believe--that probably most Americans believe--is still possible, and that still exists despite the dark cloud that we have been living under for half a century now.

I have pretty much avoided the "conspiracy theory" tomes about JFK's death since the day that the conspiracy unfolded. That event was too traumatic for me. I could not read about it from a legalistic or investigative or political or any other incomplete perspective. I read James Douglass' book, frankly, because he is a Catholic Worker and is close to Thomas Merton (the Trappist monk who tried to publicly oppose nuclear weapons way back in the '50s and '60s). The Catholic Workers are really good people. And the book was published (last year) by the Maryknoll Brothers--also very good people. So I read it--and it turned out to be a watershed for me, reading that book. It is utterly convincing, as to who killed JFK and why, and, what is more, Douglass understands that event from every perspective, including that of the spiritual failure of the men who thought they were doing their patriotic duty, as well as the "bits and pieces" perspective of all the people used for misdirection, and including all the questions and issues that have ever arisen about this event (LBJ, the Warren Commission, the Vietnam War, the false trail laid to Russia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK opening backchannels to Krushchev and Castro, to get around the CIA, his firing of the CIA Director, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, etc.). Douglass fully explains the CONTEXT--what was at stake--and what exactly happened and how, and what happened afterwards--and goes one step further, and sets this event within the SPIRITUAL context of this on-going Nuclear Age--the crisis in each of our souls, and in JFK's soul, and in the souls of everyone involved, then and now, who would depend upon the threat of complete annihilation of the human race and of all life on earth, to "defend" a system by which the rich get richer and the poor die of hunger, homelessness and neglect.

It is one hell of a great book! Maybe the most important American book ever written. Read it! Really. And then forget about "original sin" and join the Enlightenment, in which redemption of the human soul--and creation of a better country--ARE POSSIBLE. Face the "unspeakable" and cease wallowing in the darkness of this cruel, war profiteering, corporate-run monster that our country has become. Understand its origins, stop mourning what was lost--the chance we had, half a century ago, to go in a different and better direction--and start going there NOW, no matter how difficult it may be, now.

Douglass in a sense gives us that second chance. And he is coming out with Vol. II and Vol. III, about RFK's and MLK's murders, respectively. A total purging of the dreadful past. A chance for renewal--which cannot occur until we stop being blind about these events and how they led to NOW.

-----


"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strike out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance." --Robert F. Kennedy

[nashville_brook]

16. this is actually one of the best books i've read on the politics of that era -- it a real solid

treatment of the peace movement from a completely different angle. as a "Kennedy Catholic" I completely appreciate the addition to the history of the time.

[Octafish]

17. Funny things, ideas.

For one, they can't be killed. And that book is a game-changer.

Thanks, Brooksie. The words to adequately express my appreciation have have yet to be invented.

[nashville_brook]

10. here's the entire memo -- they're tweaked.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/internal-memo-intelligence-community-frets-about-washington-post-series/59891/



I briefed the IC Deputies Committee this afternoon regarding the forthcoming Dana Priest articles in the Washington Post covering the growth of the Defense Department and Intelligence Community infrastructure since 2001. I was asked to share the briefing with the IC PAOs as part of our preparation for publication.
I reported to you last January on this planned series, culminating two years of work. Ms Priest advises that the most likely publication target is mid-July.

Themes

While we can't predict specific content, we anticipate the following themes:

· The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.

· The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

· The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.

Format

The Washington Post may run a series of three articles, the first being an overview, the second focused on the large number of contractors supporting the intelligence enterprise, and the third looking at a specific community (the Fort Meade/BWI Airport area) that has expanded in part due to Intelligence Community growth.

The Washington Post is expected to work with Public Broadcasting Service's Frontline program to add a television component to this work, and will also present an interactive web site demonstrating growth of the intelligence enterprise and inviting comment and dialogue. The Post advises that "links" between individual contractors and specific agencies have been deleted, although the Post will still cite contractors and their locations.

Management of Responses

We do not know which agencies will receive attention, and each agency will need to manage its own responses. Many or all of you have participated in conference calls that have discussed this series, and ODNI PAO Director Wendy Morigi will continue to serve as point of contact for sharing information and discussion of questions received from employees and the media. The ODNI will send a message to its employees and will share that with you in case it's of use in crafting your own messages. She will also keep the NSC communicators apprised of the state of play as the series unfolds.

Office of Legislative Affairs Director Kathleen Turner will manage ODNI's response to inquiries from the Hill regarding the series.

It might be helpful as you prepare for publication to draw up a list of accomplishments and examples of success to offer in response to inquiries to balance the coverage and add points that deserve to be mentioned. In media discussions, we will seek to garner support for the Intelligence Community and its members by offering examples of agile, integrated activity that has enhanced performance. We will want to minimize damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information.

Next week we will convene a meeting or conference call to review procedural action before, during and after publication, and to compare substantive points that might be offered in rebuttal to the article.


Conclusion

This series has been a long time in preparation and looks designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light. We need to anticipate and prepare so that the good work of our respective organizations is effectively reflected in communications with employees, secondary coverage in the media and in response to questions.



If I or anyone at ODNI can be of assistance, we are here to help.

[DirkGently]

13. This fits

with a lot of what we've seen over the past years. Compromised government, captured by for-profit industry. And military intelligence is potentially the worst arena in which this could occur. We should be prepared to pick up whatever is revealed and make some noise so that it can't be drowned out in the inevitable storm of pseudo-patriotic "shut up and let us protect you from the Bogeymen" counterattack that's sure to follow.

GREAT post.

[bvar22]

11. You didn't hear it from me.

In fact, I'm not even in this thread.

[WillyT]

14. Now Cut That Out !!!

:scared:

:evilgrin:

:hi: